do not find
out what has become of him I shall go mad."

The lawyers spoke of courage and patience, but a sickly smile twisted
Folco's lips.

"Put yourself in my place, if you can," he answered.

The lawyers, who knew the value of the property to a farthing, wished
they could, though if they had known also what was passing in his mind
they might have hesitated to exchange their lot for his.

"He was like your own son," they said sympathetically. "A wife and a son
gone on the same day! It is a tragedy. It is more than a man can bear."

"It is indeed!" answered Corbario in a low voice and looking away.

Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the two men came
to the villa about the business, and when they left they never failed to
look at each other gravely and to remark that Folco was a person of the
deepest feeling, to whom such an awful trial was almost worse than
death; and the elder lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said
that if such a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but
the younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see the
world and try to divert his thoughts. In their different ways they were
hard-headed, experienced men; yet neither of them suspected for a moment
that there was anything wrong. Both were honestly convinced that Folco
had been a model husband to his dead wife, and a model father to her
lost son. What they could not understand was that he should not find
consolation in possessing their millions, and they could only account
for the fact by calling him a person of the deepest feeling--a feeling,
indeed, quite past their comprehension.

Even the Contessa dell' Armi was impressed by the unmistakable signs of
suffering in his face. She went twice to see him within three weeks
after her friend's death, and she came away convinced that she had
misjudged him. Aurora did not go with her, and Corbario barely asked
after her. He led Maddalena to his dead wife's room and begged her to
take some object that had belonged to the Signora, in memory of their
long friendship. He pressed her to accept a necklace, or a bracelet, or
some other valuable ornament, but Maddalena would only take a simple
little gold chain which she herself had given long ago.

Her own sorrow for her friend was profound but undemonstrative, as her
nature had grown to be. Aurora saw it, and never referred to it,
speaking only now and then of Marcello, to ask if there were any